Going Green

Are you green? Is that green? It says green on the bottle, it must be good, they can't lie about that.

Thank you Al Gore for the buzz word of a generation. So I just got an email explaining the new "greener" process for our company Christmas gifts. Well before I go off the deep end, read it.

In support of the hospital's goal to be green, the greeting card and envelope are made from recycled paper and the gift selection card is embedded with flower seeds and can be planted and watered to grow flowers after the card has been redeemed.

I'm sure if we plant these the flower will grow new gift cards that can be replanted, and so on and so forth saving the world from the evil of human kind. Only isn't burying garbage in your yard illegal? Don't land fills need a federal permit to do just that? But this time it's ok, because well it is stamped as a green product. And that's clearly a regulated term that can't just be stamped on anything right? No one would ever lie about that? And everyone has agreed what makes something "green" right? Yeah all of this has been worked out and we the consumer bear no responsibility anymore once we buy something that's green.

Why "green" by the way? Are the only living things that are good green? Should we destroy any plant or animal that does not have some green? Fungi are mostly evil by this narrow focus term. Only there is this really smart guy who thinks that he can save the world with Fungi. Check this out. Paul Staments on 6 ways Fungi can save the world.

I ramble more when I don't feel good. You're welcome!

I win the internet, again

http://superobamaworld.com/

You can make this kind of thing up...

but if you pick your friends correctly you don't have to. I have two friend in particular you wish you'll wish you knew after reading this. Or you won't. Whatever. I don't need you to approve my friends.

Anyway Don is a bit of a prankster from time to time, and doesn't always have the best gauge of what is appropriate work friendly material. Danny is keenly aware of who Don is.

So Don sends out an email with this video and the title "Pretty Amazing".



Danny replies:
"wow, I don’t think I've ever seen one that big disintegrate so quickly! I am definitely going to make sure I wear a rain coat next time I go to the Grand Canyon!"


Don replies:
"OH COME ON!!! That was at least kick ass!"

Danny replies:
"Yeah, but that guy totally would have been fine if he hadn't tried to go back for his hat."

I reply:
"I think the point Danny is trying to make here is that he's not going to open a video Don sends while at work. Spot on Danny. I failed this test and watched the vid. That is pretty impressive."

This leads to an IM conversation between Danny and I. *(I cut out the part of the conversation about tools drummer and how he reads music rectally. It was funny, but probably only to Danny and I.)
Danny:
heh
so what is the video?
James :
a guy with no arms playing "let it be" with his feet
Danny:
lol
wait, am I allowed to laugh?
James:
totally
Danny:
or am I violating that guy's civil rights since he can't just cover his ears?
James:
the guy can play gitar better than you, he doesn't qualify as ahndicapped anymore
I on the other hand do based on my total inability to type
Danny:
besides, his hands have already been "capped"
James:
and the vid said he was born without them. so he's not "missing" his arms
he evolved
Danny:
he's turning into a missile?
James:
next gen stealth, it lulls you into a false sense of security with beatles music
he's in the next xmen movie
he's toad's arch enemy


I'm James Snyder and I approved this blog post.

Fear and empty shoes in Utah.

I'm into month two of the Pharmacy job. I'm hearing good things about my performance, but I'm not letting any of that go to my head. I think I'm best served with a low personal opinion of my abilities for a while. The guy I am trying to replace knows more about the app's that I support than the vendor.

My feet are big, but the shoes I have before me are friggen huge.

Adding a StrikeThrough Icon and/or shortcut to Word

Stolen from Dreamboat at Ozgrid. Check this site out if you want to learn more about Excel/MS Office.

I don't know of one and wasn't able to find one. But you can do this:

Open Word to a blank doc.
Hit Alt+F11 or Tools-Macro-Visual Basic Editor.
On the left in the VBE, choose Normal.dot.
Hit Insert-Module.
In the code window at right, paste this:


Sub LuckyStrike()

Selection.Font.StrikeThrough = True

End Sub


Hit the SAVE diskette. Close the VBE with the X.
Go to Tools-Customize. Choose the commands tab.
On the left, scroll down to Macros.
On the right, click on your macro.
Drag it up to the toolbar if you want a toolbar button.
Click "keyboard" at the bottom.
Type the shortcut Ctrl+5
Ok.
Ok.
Ok.
Ok.
or however many times you need to hit ok.

Maintaining a high rate of mobility like a cranially deficient flightless foul.

Still trying to learn my new job. And do my old job. And deal with the city about the greenness of my lawn. And....

Lets just say I feel like I could use a clone.

Now accepting donations

So I want to build a personal Beowulf cluster. What is a Beowulf cluster you ask? It's a high performance cluster of inexpensive personal computers. In in very simplistic way it's going from one horse pulling your cart to a team of horses doing it. The work load is spread to all the computers in the cluster, creating one single super computer.

Why you ask? Why not I answer. No I do not have a practical application of this in mind. I want to try to build it because I think I can. My inspiration is Professer Joel Adams at Calvin College. His Microwulf cost 2500 dollars in January of 2007 and was capable of 26 Gflops. One Giga flops is 10 to the ninth floating point operations per second. The first Cray-1 Supercomputer was sold to the Los Alamos National Laboratory for $8.86 million (US) and was only capable of about 160 Mega flops.

The system I want to build will run about 1300 dollars, and I expect 40 to 50 Gflops. However my performance estimates could be way off. I've never built a cluster before. But then that's why I want to do this. Some people want to run a marathon, I want to build a supercomputer.

Now the question is how to come up with 1300 dollars...

iPhone, lawl.

How to ruin the hype you built up with the iPod.

Step 1: Believe your own hype.
Step 2: Release the phone on a single network.
Step 3: Install a kill switch to feed your ego and piss customers off.
Step 4: Re-release the phone because you left out features that should have been there in the first place.
Step 5: Block app's that compete with your own and steal there feature sets.
Step 6: Ignore your app dev's and watch them run to another competing open source project.
Step 7:...
Step 8: Profit(?)

Promotion

So I recently accepted a new position with the U (University of Utah). Starting October 1st I'm the Pharmacy Systems Analyst. I'll basically support the live pharmacy software. Big changes and lots to learn for me. But I'll still be working for the same people so atleast there isn't the added social aspect to adjust too.

I know I've told most people about this already, but I figure this is the kind of thing a blog is for. So there you go, I hope you're happy.

QFT

I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.
- Augusten Burroughs

LHC

So the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) went live this week. If you're out of the loop it's a proton accelerator. It will fire protons at each other so that they explode and the results can be measured. The data will be used to further understand matter, dark matter, etc.

Some groups feared that this process would form tiny black holes that would then detroy the earth. Clearly this hasn't happened. Anyway I've added a link to the web cam, check it out.

LHC Live Web Cam

So there I was...

So I've got this web space and sometimes I have things to say. I've been saying them in the past on MySpace. But MySpace.com does not reflect the space I am in almost ever. So welcome to a space that is mine, without being MySpace. I may import a couple of my MySpace blog entries here, because I think I'm pretty clever.

Not sure how I'm going to squeeze in another MySpace at this point, kind of running out of idea's on how to beat MySpace into the ground. I know I'll include a link to my MySpace page.

http://www.myspace.com/neonghost

MySpace, MySpace, MySpace, MySpace, MySpace, MySpace, MySpace, MySpace, MySpace.

*This post is probably a bad idea, I'll end up on google for the top 3 links to MySpace (hah did it again, and you thought it was over).